Photo from http://www.davidmccandless.com/talks/

Development Watch UK sat down with David McCandless, the data journalist behind Information is Beautiful to talk about infographics, design, and why pie charts aren’t so sweet:

How did you decide to make the transition from journalist to data journalist?

I’m not sure I decided.  It was kind of accidental.  I’d been a print journalist for many years, this is my 25^th year, and around 2000 I was getting a bit bored, and I was doing a lot of web stuff and seeing the potential of the web and that you had to design information.

My first websites were hilarious because they were just text, and I didn’t even think to design them.  At the same time I was a freelance journalist so I had to pitch ideas all the time so I had to stay on top of a lot of different fields and be quite current, and I amassed a lot of information.  I had a huge amount of notes.

There was a kind of moment about four years ago where I was researching an article on creationism and evolutionary theory, because in creationism and evolutionary theory there are all these different sub-groups that disagree with each other.  So I was struggling to keep track of it myself and I drew a little diagram and tried to sum up each perspective as succinctly as I could just for my own reference.  And I remember I did this diagram and looked at it and thought, “well, I’ve done my job as a journalist.  I’ve conveyed my understanding of the subject.”  And I realized that maybe I didn’t need to write the article.  Maybe this diagram could be the article.

I like to go off the beaten track with ideas and often times I couldn’t sell them to the media because they were too “out there” or there wasn’t a topical hook.  So I also saw it as an opportunity to do that myself.

So then you created Information is Beautiful?

The book came first.  My agent was asking if I had another idea for a book and I told him I wanted to do something about information maps.  I sat on the idea for about six months, and then the pressure built up so I did a proposal in March 2008 with the Billion Dollar-o-gram.

I did the book from August 2008 to April 2009.  When I finished the book, all the UK bookshops refused to stock it.  They considered it to be too high concept, and it was credit crunch time and it cost £20.

So I launched the website to build up momentum and get some attention.  The website kicked off and then the bookshops wanted to stock it.

You’ve become a kind of celebrity in this field, did you ever expect this to turn out the way it did?

No, it was really just good timing.  It was a real ordeal making that book, and I wasn’t a real designer, I had to learn on the job and I really doubted myself, to be honest.  I didn’t think it was any good.  It’s all been a delicious surprise.

Where do your ideas come from?

I get my ideas from the joy of understanding things and discovering things, but I’m also quite inspired by negative feelings, like boredom, frustration and bewilderment.  Because if I’m reading a piece and feeling these things, it’s a sign that something isn’t working.  If something isn’t working it needs a solution, and that’s what design is about—providing solutions.

Do you think certain subjects, like sustainable development, lend themselves better to data visualization?

Yes, I think the more confusion and bewilderment and abstraction there is surrounding a subject, the more it needs that kind of approach.  The environmental pieces I did for the book took me so long to research.  I was just appalled by the writing.

And then how do they become visualizations?

I always start conceptually, so the first 2-3 months of the book I didn’t do any design, I just researched and came up with about 300 ideas in an Excel spreadsheet with title and subtitle.  For me, if it’s a strong concept it’s got to be able to stand alone.  And some of them were vague, like knowing I wanted to do something about the carbon cycle or something about music.  And that was enough to start and it was whittled down to about 180 that made it into the book.

Then it goes to researching and structuring the data, entering the information in Excel or Google docs, and then I start sketching and designing.  They can take anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of months.

What’s the most time-intensive visualization you’ve done?

Snake oil, probably, about dietary supplements.  That was a load of work.  It was a nightmare.  It’s the kind of information you need to get right as well, so it’s a lot of checking.

You’ve discussed that sometimes you need to retract an infographic because of errors.  How often does that happen?

It’s happened badly once, and then I get lots of little corrections from people online.  Which is fantastic, and it’s really changed my perspective.  The idea that one person can be the authority on a subject is just so old-fashioned.  Socializing and fact-checking has been a huge aspect of this.

Do you do all of the research yourself?

I’ve got a researcher, but I like to do a lot of the research as well.  I actually enjoy research and understanding things.  It gives me more of a connection to the subject and then the design just comes more organically.

Why do you hate pie charts?

I think they’re just overused, and they’re crap if you’ve got more than two or three data points, they just get all manky.  I think pie charts and crappy bar charts are brilliant, but they’re overused and we’re sick of seeing them, and they don’t tell you anything, really.  They’re just very annoying.

What is your favourite infographic that you’ve done?

I think the left versus right one.  Because it excites me when you visualize stuff that you can’t see.  And data is something you can’t see, but also your own concepts about how you see the world are things you can’t see, necessarily.  That’s really exciting.  In fact, I think that’s going to be a whole new direction for me in the future.

Do you worry about bias when you’re creating these visualizations?  Is there a way you control for that?

Well, I’m aware of it.  This socializing aspect, putting it online, you get much wider opinions.  And I try to eliminate bias as much as possible.  I think with those kind of subjects, politically, it’s so polarized and a reactionary kind of area that it’s easy to see the bias.  But there are deeper biases that run through media and our culture that are perhaps less visible and certainly internalized.

I did an interactive piece on consciousness, but I didn’t include a Christian perspective.  So people asked where it was, and I realized I’d just completely ignored it because it was a personal bias of mine.  I was thinking Christians aren’t really interested in that question.  They’re interested in who is God or what is God, but not necessarily what is consciousness so I sort of screened them out.  There’s 2.4 billion people lopped off.

I’m going to go back and add it in.

Do you think being a journalist helped you strive for objectivity?  Do you think it was a natural process?

I think this is a form of journalism anyway.  I see it as journalism, not a design form, and I think that’s what people tend to have trouble getting their heads around.  They employ designers to do this work, but designers don’t necessarily come with the right storytelling or informational structuring capacity.  They often make something beautiful, but you can’t make head or tail of it, or it focuses on the wrong thing or doesn’t tell a story.

I think the objectivity more stems from wanting to do good work.  And I know that the best work is balanced and open.

Do you think what you do is a replacement for traditional journalism, or a supplement to it?

Just a supplement.

Do you ever become frustrated by the amount of research required for just one visualization?

No, I love it.  And the data set is something you can share with people.  It’s a living resource that you can use forever online.

Which of your creations do you think has been the most popular?

The billion dollar-o-gram has been very popular, and I didn’t really expect that.  I think because it’s very quintessential data visualization.  You take something visible and it opens your mind to relationships between things.  It’s colorful, simple design and I think it’s a pretty good example of the potential.

With visualizations like Debtris, how do you choose which items to include?

That’s where journalism and storytelling comes in.  Like with the billion dollar-o-gram, I haven’t just chosen those blocks because they tessellate neatly.  There’s a rhythm to the way in which I’ve ordered the story so you can read it from right to left or downwards and there’s variety.  So I’ve chosen things that I think have impact or create ironic juxtapositions, and inevitably that’s a bit subjective.

Neville Brody has criticized your visualizations as “beguiling and seductive.”  Do you think they oversimplify a story?

I do think they’re beguiling and seductive.  Definitely.  Because when you design information it has an impact and you’re moving into the visual sphere, which plays with all kinds of cognitive and mental modes.  I think it’s a fair point, and that’s why I try to pair everything with transparency.  All of the data is open, I’m open about my work.  I correct things.  People can see the paper trail.

I wouldn’t consider it oversimplification, I would consider it optimization, which is different.  It’s a design process—removing things to distill something down to its essence.  You get rid of stuff that you don’t need to know so you can get to what’s important, much like writing a story.

Is it possible to make a living doing this?  You’re one of a handful of people viewed as experts in the field, but is it a viable option for many?

I’ve been lucky.  Somehow people perceive me as being the first, although I refute that because I’ve been following all of these other people (Hans Rosling, Ben Fry, etc.) for years.  So yes, obviously I am making a living out of it.  If I was just doing it as a journalist I could probably make a decent wage, but I also do commercial work and privatizing, so I make a pretty comfortable living.  And my book is selling.

What amazes me is that more journalists aren’t doing this.  I’m really surprised.  Because it feels like a totally natural step.  You get to that point where you research something and you can either write an article or create an infographic.  It’s just a question of going one way.

It seems for many journalists the idea of getting into this can be really intimidating, but you taught yourself, right?

Yeah, I taught myself Adobe Illustrator.  You can’t rush it.  For my book, I knew I wasn’t a strong designer so I hired an art director who guided me and advised me on stuff I was blind to.  And it takes a couple of years of practice and I look at design blogs every day so I fill my mind with imagery.

I used to think visual design and art was some kind of mystical thing and it just is not.  You just simply learn how to do it.

Do you think data journalism is the future of journalism?

No.  I think the future of journalism is greater transparency, more participation and the idea that an article is never finished.  You write an article and then it’s alive and if you’ve got the right mechanisms in place it can grow and become a living thing.  Things just aren’t necessarily finished anymore.

Reported and edited by J. Abels

I made this bubble chart using IBM’s super-useful Many Eyes. The website allows you to make all kinds of infographics with publicly available data or you can upload your own stats instead and just use their tools.

This infographic shows the different Gini coefficients of many developed countries. I thought this would make for an interesting infographic because I’ve always thought Gini coefficients were a really good way of measuring how well a country is doing. Essentially, the numbers represent how wealth is distributed within each country. Scores range from 0 (complete equality) to 1 (total inequality) and are based on a ratio, thus avoiding outliers from skewing the data as sometimes happens with other measures such as GDP.

After I’d put the infographic together, I began to think maybe this wasn’t the best data set for a bubble chart. With Gini coefficients, it’s best to have a smaller number, making Sweden the top-performer on this chart. That doesn’t seem obvious though, and is almost counter-intuitive for this type of chart, where a reader might assume that the biggest circle is the best performer.

Also, there’s the obvious problem that the names of many of the countries don’t fit inside their respective bubbles, which makes the chart look really mismatched. Many Eyes is a wonderful tool, but it’s important to use the right data with the right type of infographic. What types of data do you think make for the best bubble charts?

by E. Wolfe

Chiqui Esteban…

used to work as a journalist in print newspapers,

is working as Director of New Narratives of the spanish web media lainformacion.com and as infographics consultant for Innovation Media Consulting,

is now running the infographic News blog(http://infographicsnews.blogspot.com).

How did you get into doing infographics?

That’s what I always wanted to be, but I didn’t know it can be a professional job. I wanted to study journalism and talked with one of my friends who studied in the University of Navarre. She told she was participating in the organization of the Malofiej infographics awards and explained me what Malofiej and infographics is about. After that, I went to the Unversity of Navarre, studied journalism and participated in the organization of Malofiej awards. Then, I did several internships until I finished my career and started working in the infographics department of La Voz de Galicia.

What skills do you need to design infographics?

If you’re doing it for journalistic media, the first thing you need to do is to be a journalist. I’m not talking about the title or the career, that helps, but I’m talking about a way of working. Then, think visually, be clean and always, try to explain things, not doing beautiful things.

What are the pros and cons of data visualization?  How can an infographic tell a story better than words?

It depends on the story. There are no pros and cons, each story needs to be explained in a particular way to be completely understood. Some will need words, others data visualizations. Datavis allows you to show very big amounts of data on an understandable way, where readers can choose how to read the info they want to see. But not all the stories work that way.

What type of data lends itself best to infographics?

Procedures, amounts, comparisons and geographical explanations are the best kind of data. Bust almost all kind of data can be explained visually.

Where do infographics fit in the larger journalism landscape?  What media works best for infographics?

They don’t have to fit in journalism. They’re journalism itself if they’re used in a journalistic way. They’re an important part of the future of journalism because journalism has to fit in society and our society is becoming more and more visual.

The best media for infographics is internet, because the interactivity is a very, very important feature in explanations. It is much easier to explain things when readers can learn them by themselves, interacting, participating.

by E. Park

by J. Abels

Using the awesome new Google Public Data Explorer we told you about a few weeks ago, I put together this infographic about electricity consumption around the world. By “exploring” publicly available data from the World Bank, I was able to make a map that shows, per capita, how many  kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity various countries use. Of course, this data set doesn’t include every country, but the infographic does paint a pretty telling picture about which countries produce and use the most electricity.

To see how we got to this point by watching the data evolve from 1960 to 2007, check out the full infographic here.

by E. Wolfe

(Graph Created by using Illustrator)

All over the world, environmental market is becoming more and more important factor in country’s economy. According to a figure from the UK Centre for Economic and Environmental Development, by 2015, environmental market sector is expected to grow by 45% to at least $800 billion with a current market value of $700 billion.

The OECD defines environmental market including goods and services as followings.

–         Goods and services that are clearly supplied for an environmental purpose only and that have a significant impact in reducing polluting emissions (Pollution Management),

–         Goods and services which reduce or eliminate negative environmental impacts, but which are often supplied for other than environmental purposes (Cleaner Technologies),

–         Goods and services which may be associated with environmental protection — although their prime purpose is not environmental protection — by means of a sustainable natural resource management in each sector defined by environmental standards (Resource Management).

by E. Park

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, delivered his annual budget to Parliament yesterday. In his speech, Osborne stated his “determination to be the greenest government ever” and talked a fair bit about sustainable initiatives being financed by his budget.

Of course there are a number  of words that can be used to describe these initiatives, “green,” “sustainable,” “eco-friendly,” and so on, but the first one alone made quite an appearance on budget day. We created this word cloud to look at the most popular buzzwords Osborne used in his speech, and “green” received enough mention to make the cut. Of course, it wasn’t as prominent as other words like “year” and “tax” so it might take some searching to find (See the “new” in the middle? Look above the “n”) but it’s obvious that green funding was very important this year.

The fact that “green” showed up as often, if not more, than “uk” and “economic” in the UK budget speech certainly is interesting to note.

by E. Wolfe

This map, created by McGill University PhD candidate Jason Samson, shows the vulnerability of human populations located around the world to climate change. Unfortunately, Samson’s research (which is funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada) shows that the regions of the world that have contributed the least to global warming will most likely suffer the worst consequences of. Areas in red are expected to be the most vulnerable to climate change, and this includes most of Africa, parts of South America, and the Arabian Peninsula.

by E. Wolfe

The global risks advisory firm Maplecroft released an infographic about Climate Change Vulnerability Index(CCVI).

According to the Climate Change Vulnerability Index, Bangladeshi and India turned out to be the most vulnerable to the climate change due to extreme levels of poverty and a high dependency on agriculture, coming in first and second. Other 14 countries categorised as “extreme risk” are developing countries including Philippines (6), Vietnam (13) and Pakistan (16).

The Climate Change Vulnerability Index calculates 42 social, economic and environmental factors of 170 countries. These include: “exposure to climate-related natural disasters and sea-level rise; human sensitivity, in terms of population patterns, development, natural resources, agricultural dependency and conflicts”.

by E. Park

This infographic from wheredoesmymoneygo.org visualises the Department for International Development’s spending. It clearly breaks down where the £5.6 billion that was spent between 2004 and 2009 went, with the largest share going to help development in Africa, but followed closely by the European Commission.

by E. Wolfe